Can "higher" animals "think"? [Archive] - Straight Dope Message Board

Ringo

09-02-1999, 08:52 PM

mangeorge

I didn't read all of the article, but enough. You've been around here about as long as I have - do you remember a thread where Nickrz got kinda cranked up on this subject? Well, no matter to the answer to your question.

My observations are anecdotal and focus on one animal. I've never had pets, but I've taken care of many and spent a decade with a woman who is a bona fide "animal person".

There was a Weimarener (SP?) I kept often in college (Misty). This dog and I became close associates and the dog was exceptional. I've known many a pooch, but this one had a huge vocabulary. We could tell her to go get in beatle's car and she knew which of the six out front it was. She could be moody as hell and conniving, too. She'd take days to get over a slight, but would mend it in a minute if she detected that tone of conversation over the phone that's associated w/planning a trip w/a travel agent. One weekend I had her sitting in "her" chair and I was sitting on the couch. Just for grins, I faked passing out - I groaned a little and rolled off the couch and face down on the floor. I could hear her whimper because she knew she was not allowed to get out of her chair, and after a minute she jumped down and came over. She then commenced a multi-stage operation that I took to be evidence of some forethought. She buried her nose under my right shoulder and plowed in, causing me to roll over on my back; she then plowed under the center of my back causing my limp body to acquire a halfway sitting up (but bent over) position; she then shoved my shoulder and (other side) legs so as to spin me around on my butt to where I was in an appropriate position w/the couch for her to push my torso/head back to a resting position against the couch. Misty then licked my face about a dozen times, saw I wasn't coming around and ran down the stairs to bark and claw at my downstairs neighbor's door. He came and I "revived" and all was well; but I was impressed.

Two more quick things about Misty:
1) I was already impressed w/her vocabulary, so one weekend I tried to teach her the command "Forget" (college is great for the idle mind). She managed to learn that it meant stop looking at whatever she was looking at.
2) She was a huntress and I soon learned that I could get her wound up like a small block Chevy by imitating the sounds of squirrels - then one day it dawned on me that the squirrels made their little "chut-chut" sound until the barking hound showed up. Then they were silent. I think Misty realized that I was making the sounds and we were playing a game where she learned that continuing to bark like a hound around the base of a tree somehow pleased her companion, beatle.

I am familiar w/the psychological phenomenon of "projection" and I do not think that applies here. I've known many animals and most are simple to deal with. My own experience argues for the possibility of "complex" thought in other animals.

Does that mean we proffer to them all of the same rights we try to guarantee ourselves? Without the concomitant responsibilities, I think not.

Regards

bantmof

09-02-1999, 08:58 PM

Can "higher" animals think?
Well, I'm a "higher animal", and I can think. There's evidence to suggest that I'm not alone in that respect, so it seems reasonable to conclude that higher animals can think.

I suspect there's some continuum of intelligence, and where one lies depends both on one's species and one's particular intelligence within one's species. I think it's a greyscale, not black and white. Watching a squirrel invent a way to get to the birdseed, going to great, creative lengths to circumvent various devices designed to keep it away from the birdseed, leaves one without much doubt that animals can think. You can't really explain that away to a conditioned response, especially when the squirrel has never seen the particular situation before. The squirrel won't be learning calculus or quantum theory any time soon, so it probably lies somewhere between Pauly Shore and Einstein on the intelligence continuum.

I bet there's a lot of overlap between species too. Smart apes are probably smarter than the dumbest humans. (I'm not being sarcastic here - since human intelligence goes from essentially zippo to a very high level, it doesn't take much for a smart ape to be smarter than some small fraction of humans).
--
peas on earth

Jophiel

09-02-1999, 09:27 PM

I'm going to add my own questioninto the mix (it does relate)

From what I can gather, part of what helps evolve advanced thought is language. Not only can we communicate with each other more clearly, but when we think, it seems that we think "in English" (or whatever language) and I would guess that without language, we'd have a much harder time organizing thoughts greater than "I'm hungry" or "That big thing looks mean". Certainly, I'd hate to try to puzzle out cold fusion without the benefit of being able to think in big words.

So, if you take an "intelligent" animal that can be taught to imitate speech (such as a raven for spoken word or Koko the gorilla using sign language), will it become more intelligent as it learns that "Food" means food, "Sleep" means sleep and "Give me the damn kitten, woman, or I'll tear your arm off and beat you with the bloody limb" means.. well, you get the idea. Will teaching an animal that words have definite concepts increase its ability to create advanced thoughts and thus make it smarter? At the very least, you'd have a very annoying raven yelling "I'm hungry!" twenty-four hours a day.

------------------
"I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn't."

sly

09-02-1999, 09:47 PM

Experiment #1:

Place a chicken in a box which is open on one end and grated on the other. Place a bowl of feed outside the grated end. The chicken will migrate toward the grated end and stand there all day staring at the feed.

Experiment #2:

Place a dog/cat/chimpanzee/loverock in said box with a bowl of food outside the grated end. The dog/cat/chimp/loverock will soon "realize" that to get the food, he must exit the box and go around. Okay, maybe not loverock.

Is that "thinking"? In the classic sense, no, I don't believe so. As Jophiel mentioned, thinking, as we know it, involves language: "What I really need to do is go outside of this box to enjoy my food". Perhaps a lower order of thinking.

Czarcasm

09-02-1999, 10:01 PM

Well, back in the '70's we made our cat higher by blowing toke smoke in her face.
She didn't seem any smarter to us!

hansel

09-02-1999, 10:17 PM

It doesn't demonstrate a hidden world into which we might break if we just learned enough to communicate, but certainly, in some sense, they're thinking. They're demonstrating some grasp of tool use, which implies a rough sense of cause and effect.

However, the failure to demonstrate symobolic thinking by teaching apes like Koko or chimps like Nym Chympsky sign language says that we think in a fundamentally different (more advanced?) way than higher animals.

------------------
"Existence defies essence." - John Barth?

bantmof

09-02-1999, 10:35 PM

it seems that we think "in English" (or whatever language)
Personally, I think in "pig latin". :-)

But seriously, I think that one can think without doing so in a language. In fact, I do it all the time - I bet not 50% of my thoughts are expressed in my head in english. It's only when I "think about what i'm thinking" so that I can tell somebody _else_ what I'm thinking that they have to go through the "raw thought to english translator".

I always have viewed thinking as somewhat akin to being able to solve problems you haven't encountered before, and the better you can think, the more advanced problems you can solve. Language, math, and the like, are (IMHO) sort of tools to let you think more effectively, and to tell other people what you're thinking, but I don't see them as being required.

At least, I think so - I'll have to go think about it to be sure. :-)
--
peas on earth

elbow

09-03-1999, 12:16 AM

Here's my two cents, I remember reading about a study once, which I have never forgotten and often reflect on.
I believe they were testing for sense of self, but I could be mistaken.
This is how the test was conducted; a mirror was put in with the animal that it might grow familiar with it. Learn it wasn't really another animal it was seeing and such. Once this had happened, (I can't remember how they knew exactly), they would wait until the animal fell asleep and then sneak into it's enclosure and paint a bright red dot on it's face between the eyes. Then they waited to see if any of the animals put their hand to the mark, recognizing that it was their image and that they had a dot on them. You may be surprised to know that only the great apes passed this test. Makes you think - well, more precisely it made me think and still does.

bantmof

09-03-1999, 12:41 AM

they would wait until the animal fell asleep and then sneak into it's enclosure and paint a bright red dot on it's face between the eyes. Then they waited to see if any of the animals put their hand to the mark, recognizing that it was their image and that they had a dot on them.
I guess that's an interesting thing to try, but I'm not sure the results mean very much, for a couple of reasons.

First, it's an unfairly visual-centric test. It assumes animals recognize things primarily visually, as we do, but for many animals that isn't true. Cats, for example, recognize things based on smell more than appearance - in fact, you can fake them out this way!

Second, it assumes that an animals reaction would be the same as ours - to try to touch the new thing with an extremety. But that seems like an unduely anthropomorphic assumption, since it's not their reaction to other new things.

I guess I'm not convinced it was a good experiment, if it was really as described.
--
peas on earth

mangeorge

09-03-1999, 01:00 AM

Koko looked at a picture of a gorilla and signed "gorilla". But when shown a picture of himself (herself?) or a mirror, signed Koko.
When asked what Koko is, he replies "gorilla".
Chimps also recognize themselves in a mirror.
Peace,
mangeorge

NanoByte

09-03-1999, 01:00 AM

I certainly agree with bantmof and oppose Jophiel.

Clearly all the most significant thinking in creative science, engineering, art, sports -- even writing -- etc. is sublinguistic. At the other extreme, everyone's heard what airheads produce, all perfectly within the syntax, and often within the semantics of some language.

Ray (I think; therefore you are, otherwise. . .)

09-03-1999, 01:07 AM

I'm going to come down on the skeptical side and say that no animals other than humans can "think" in the sense of abstract thought. Some species like chimps, dogs, dolphins, octopi, etc are capable of learning some very complicated acts and solving very complicated problems, but none of them have demonstrated a mental ability to step beyond their actual environment.

moriah

09-03-1999, 02:57 AM

<body>
Regarding the dot on the forehead experiment:  It was first tried
on human children.  Until a child reaches a certain age, give or take
a few months, they always fail that test (I think it's somewhere between
18 to 24 months).

<hr WIDTH="100%">

Regarding the OP:  It depends on what you mean by think.

Certainly animals other than human have demonstrated the ability:
to learn to solve concrete problems/puzzles;
to learn concrete categorization ('things that are blue,' 'things that
will hurt me,' 'sounds and tones  which mean I'm going to the park!');
to learn to respond with basic emotions in concrete situations; and,
to learn to use concrete tools.

Note the learn part.  There are instinctual behaviors
which seem like the animal is thinking, but it isn't.  For
example, being mammals and pack animals, a dog will naturally follow the
alpha human and seek to cuddle with the other members of the house
-- that's not learned, and therefore, not a sign that a dog that is thinking.  
Also, being trained to do something is not the same as thinking.

Now, note the concrete part.  Animals haven't demonstrated
the ability to abstract ideas and concepts at a higher order of intelligence.

For example, a dog may mourn the loss of a member of the house who has
moved out -- but the dog doesn't know whether that person has moved away
or has died.  And, if that person died, the dog wouldn't be plunged
into the existential grief of trying to figure out the meaning of life.

A dog can jump at a door and figure out how the handle on a screen door
works.  But the dog couldn't use math to come up with an equitable
distribution of bones between itself and the other dog in the house --
it wouldn't even know the concept of being fair (though it could be trained
not to touch the other dog's food).

Animals can concretely reason, they don't seem able to abstractly think.c

Peace.
</body>
</html>

Nickrz

09-03-1999, 05:45 AM

I promise not to get "cranked up" again, beatle, but I essentially agree with Mike King. (Never had an ally on this topic before).

I foresee this topic ending up in Great Debates.

DrFidelius

09-03-1999, 07:10 AM

If we define "flying" as being able to leave the ground under your own power, then humans fly better than elephants, but not as well as chickens. How do we define "thinking" to get a valid answer to the question?

C K Dexter Haven

09-03-1999, 07:42 AM

Severin Dardin (spelling?) had an old comedy routine as a German Professor lecturing about The Universe (what else is there to lecture about?) being asked the question, "Do fish think?"

His response is to describe having some fish in a pond, and he fed them every day at three o'clock, at the same spot. Soon, the fish learned to come to that spot at three o'clock, in anticipation of the feeding. He then started showing up fifteen minutes earlier each day, and the fish starved to death. He concludes: "Yes, fish think -- but not fast enough."

bantmof

09-03-1999, 02:14 PM

I'm going to come down on the skeptical side and say that no animals other than humans can "think" in the sense of abstract thought.
I'd probably agree, but is abstract thought the _only_ type of thought? It doesn't seem that way to me. It's one of many; one that even many humans are not very adept at.

I think that seeing a new type of squirrel guard for the first time, formulating a plan to circumvent it, and carrying out that plan, is certainly thinking of a different, perhaps less sophisticated, but equally valid type.

If humans were so great at thinking, the human-designed squirrel guard would have kept the squirrel out of the birdseed. :-)
--
peas on earth

Polycarp

09-03-1999, 02:23 PM

Bantmof is almost certainly right...problem solving behavior is certainly a form of thinking. (Several humans of my acquaintance could use this talent! :( )

I do not enjoy the "my cat/dog/rabbit/goldfish is so smart that..." type of post. However, I have to give one apropos of this topic:

About 15 years ago we had a small mixed-breed cat (father pure Siamese, mother a stray) who over a span of several months developed a series of calls used for specific needs/wants that gave every evidence of her attempting to learn English words. We did not attempt to teach her these; it was, so to speak, her idea. E.g., she would stand at the door and give a "aaoouuu" call that appeared to be "out," at the refrigerator and use "eh-eh-eh-ew" for milk, near the cupboard where her cat food was kept and call "ooooooo" with an indescribable throaty stop at the end that appeared to be mimicking "food."

I have no idea if she was trying to use English words. But it sure sounded like it.

rjk

09-04-1999, 12:24 AM

No, I think bantmof is almost right, but maybe it's just that I want to quibble about the meaning of the word 'abstract'.

Many of the posts here seem to be talking about verbal or mathematical reasoning as the only "real" thought, while denying the abstractness of other forms. This seems wrong. 'Abstract thought' means, I think, the ability to build a mental model (an abstraction) of some aspect of the world, and then manipulate it internally. That definition says nothing about the form of the model; it could be verbal, or it could be as visual as some of those 'rotate the blocks' questions on IQ tests, or it could be something completely different.

If we define thought that way, then some of the behaviour described in the article linked above does look a lot like thinking. (The hidden-orange con is really good here.)

That said, there are also a couple of warnings about such observations:

- Watch out for Clever Hans. He was a horse who could do arithmetic by stamping his foot to count out the answer - as long as the questioner already knew the answer. See, for example, http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dps1rwk/comp1.html .
- Be careful about projecting your own style of thinking onto somebody you can't talk to. Even things we know aren't thinking, like computer programs that run on random numbers, can seem to do something intelligent from time to time.

------------------
Bob the Random Expert
"If we don't have the answer, we'll make one up."

mangeorge

09-04-1999, 12:39 AM

"How do we define "thinking" to get a valid answer to the question?"
---DrFidelius
-------------------------------------
This is the hard part of this question, isn't it? I mean, we're not talking rocket science here. Just the ability to learn without direct re-enforcement, then use what's learned to improve the animals own situation. Tool making, co-operation in a new situation, direct manipulation of another species (man).
I'm not talking about goldfish starving, but an orangutan who will fashion a tool to escape his cage so he can go see what's outside. And then hide that tool so his keepers won't take it away.
The ability to consider, I guess.
C'mon. Read (or at least skim) the above article. The author discusses too many instances of animal thinking for me to relate here.
Peace,
mangeorge

09-04-1999, 06:26 AM

I'd probably agree, but is abstract thought the _only_ type of thought? It doesn't seem that way to me. It's one of many; one that even many humans are not very adept at.

Abstract thought is certainly not the only form of mental activity; there is problem solving, learned behavior, memory, emotions, instinct, and others. Many of these are exhibited by animals other than humans. But I'd say that abstract thought is the hallmark of intelligence. And I've never heard any conclusive evidence than any non-human species is capable of abstract thought and virtually every human is.

No animal (other than man) will ever think the equivalent of "If I had a million dollars, how would it change my life?" Any human could answer this question (or its cultural equivalent) but no other animal could make the projection of their own life into a situation in which they have no experience or any reasonable chance of acheiving. An animal's mental horizon does not extend past their experiences and environment, only humans can go beyond this into the abstract world of fantasy.

voltaire

09-04-1999, 08:55 AM

An animal's mental horizon does not extend past their experiences and environment, only
humans can go beyond this into the abstract world of fantasy.

Bah. I'm sure people will say that I'm anthropomorphizing dogs, but have you ever seen a dog dream? I'm talking barking, whining, flinching, kicking, etc... Ferchrissakes I've even seen a dog have a wet dream. If that's not fantasy, what is?

09-04-1999, 05:33 PM

A dog dreaming is most likely remembering experiences from its own life; chasing squirrels or getting it on with a French poodle. My point is that humans are the only animals that can think about things that are totally outside of their own life experiences.

NanoByte

09-05-1999, 02:41 AM

I would ask Polycarp how his ex-cat, since she was half Siamese, got along in speaking Thai.

And Mike King appears as the typical American, thinking = planning how to spend $1,000,000.

Yes, I think agreeing on where to draw the line "thinking"/"non-thinking" is the only issue. As far as I can see, it's almost always drawn in circular manner: I think; therefore I am human. . .and vice versa.

Certainly one can't ascribe a high status to dreaming -- either by humans or dogs. It's just a clean-up exercise by the brain. There is no central control (notion of an operator's intention). I surely wouldn't call it fantasizing.

What I want to know, though, is how humans know that a dog can't "does not extend past [its] experiences and environment,. . ." Did dogs tell them?

McGruff (You think I can't sniff you guys out?)

coffeecat

09-05-1999, 10:43 AM

Non-human animals are probably not capable of abstract thought, but then, neither are children: that kind of thinking doesn't emerge until adolescence. I think most of us would say that kids can think, even if not as well or in the same way as grown ups. Likewise, if Grey Parrots have the intelligence of a four or five-year-old child, then they must think, too.

Cats think, but don't let us know, because they think communicating with a lower life form is beneath them.

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Bruce

09-05-1999, 04:31 PM

And Mike King appears as the typical American, thinking = planning how to spend $1,000,000.

Now I'm going to have to get my typical American gun and shoot you.

If it makes you feel the argument is being posed on a more intellectual plain, you can substitute the following question: "If I were invisible, how would it change my life?"
My point was not that humans are the only intelligent animal because they can think about money; my point was that humans are the only intelligent animal because they can think about an abstract condition that is unrelated to anything they've ever experienced.

As far as I can see, it's almost always drawn in circular manner: I think; therefore I am human. . .and vice versa.

I would say that the fact that humans are the only animals that consider the possibility of other intelligent species is one more proof that humans are the only intelligent species.

What I want to know, though, is how humans know that a dog can't "does not extend past [its] experiences and environment,. . ." Did dogs tell them?

It's possible that dogs are in fact thinking complex abstract thoughts and just not bothering to externalize any of them. It's also possible that the Earth is just an alien experiment and white mice are here to observe the results and that the answer to all of life's mysteries is 42. But if you want to make these arguments you had better produce some evidence.

Big Iron

09-05-1999, 05:49 PM

[[My point was not that humans are the only intelligent animal because they can think about money; my point was that humans are the only intelligent animal because they can think about an abstract condition that is unrelated to anything they've ever experienced.]]

and ...

[[I would say that the fact that humans are the only animals that consider the possibility of other intelligent species is one more proof that humans are the only intelligent species.]] MikeKing

Putting aside the semantic issue of how intelligent one must be to be "intelligent," how would one go about proving or disproving the facts upon which these statements rest?

[["What I want to know, though, is how humans know that a dog can't "does not extend past [its] experiences and environment,. . ." Did dogs tell them?"

It's possible that dogs are in fact thinking complex abstract thoughts and just not bothering to externalize any of them. It's also possible that the Earth is just an alien experiment and white mice are here to observe the results and that the answer to all of life's mysteries is 42. But if you want to make these arguments you had better produce some evidence.]]

Er, I was just thinking along similar lines ...

rjk

09-05-1999, 10:56 PM

Mike:my point was that humans are the only intelligent animal because they can think about an abstract condition that is unrelated to anything they've ever experienced.

That $1,000,000 isn't really "unrelated to anything they've ever experienced", just bigger. I doubt that humans can think of anything that's totally unrelated.

------------------
Bob the Random Expert
"If we don't have the answer, we'll make one up."

bantmof

09-07-1999, 12:07 AM

I would say that the fact that humans are the only animals that consider the possibility of other intelligent species is one more proof that humans are the only intelligent species.
I have no idea whether the premise is true or how we'd know if it was, but you seem to have a very binary view of intelligence: either something has it, or it doesn't. I don't agree. I see it as a continuum, not a binary value - i.e, the proper question to ask is how _much_ intelligence a species has. It seems pretty clear to me that non-human species still have intelligence. That humans are (apparently) the smartest species overall doesn't imply that every other species has no intelligence at all. They sure seem to exhibit the signs of having at least some.

--
peas on earth

09-07-1999, 01:30 AM

If the facts were accumulating as fast as the opinions, we'd be making some real progress here. As far as I know, no one has ever come up with a generally accepted definition of intelligence, so it's not surprising we are unable to agree on what species have it. Rather than continue to rehash the differences between our respective positions, I'm opting out. Unless someone has something new and significant to add to this discussion, you'll have to carry on without me on this subject.

aseymayo

09-07-1999, 02:35 AM

Ook...er, I mean, so what would happen if we tried to teach the other apes math?

pldennison

09-07-1999, 08:37 AM

aseymayo, this article, portions of which are quoted below, appeared in the Globe & Mail on 10/23/98:

Monkeys can count up to nine and can discriminate between groups of objects in ascending order.

Two researchers at Columbia University in New York report in the journal Science today that two rhesus monkeys called Rosencrantz and Macduff have proved that animals can think, even though they have no formal language.
. . .Elizabeth Brannon, said: "Though monkeys do not recognize the word 'two' or the numeral 2, they share with humans the ability to master simple arithmetic on at least the level of a two-year-old child. We don't have direct evidence yet, but it seems likely that these monkeys, and other non-human primates, can count."

Chimpanzees are humans' closest animal relatives. Rosencrantz and Macduff are distant cousins. Yet when presented with 35 sets of images on a touch-sensitive screen, they learned to handle them in an ascending order.

They touched one square, two trees, three ovals and four flowers in that order -- and were rewarded with a banana-flavoured delicacy. If they got the order wrong, the screen went black and the game began again. But they carried on playing with their touch-screen fruit machine and ended up performing what researchers described as "cognitive serial tasks" without any more instruction from the scientists.

"It's like using your password to get money from a cash machine, but it is actually much harder for the monkeys," Mr. Terrace said. "The pictures, and their position on the screen, change each time they try for another pellet of food. When you go to a cash machine, you don't have to deal with the numbers being in strange positions each time. We ask a lot, cognitively speaking, of our non-human primate subjects."

Having gotten the hang of one to four, the newly numerate monkeys were then tested on a different set of images, showing objects from five to nine. They did just as well. They could only have done this, the researchers say, if they had learned some numerical rule for ordering the contents of the pictures.

The examiners got tougher. They showed Rosencrantz and Macduff pictures with five and seven objects in them and asked them to touch them in ascending order. They did. "It shows that monkeys know things about numbers that we haven't taught them," Ms. Brannon said.

The latest research focused on a problem first raised by French philosopher Rene Descartes more than 300 years ago. He argued that "abstract thinking" required language, which made humans different from all other living things. Biologists have never been sure of that: Animals may not have conversations, but they quite clearly communicate with each other.

For a while anthropologists argued that humans were different because they used tools. But zoologists pointed out that tool-using, too, was quite common in the animal world. Since then the debate has focused on difficult-to-define ideas such as "consciousness" and on particular social behaviour using symbols or sounds.

Geenius

09-07-1999, 02:52 PM

Polycarp: I've had a similar cat experience. Some friends of mine had a cat that seemed to recognize English words (one time, when someone said the word "spider" in casual conversation, the cat's ears pricked up, and he ran out of the room and came back with his favorite toy, a pompom spider) and to understand the idea of property (when my friends left food out on the table, he would mess with the food of the guy who didn't like him and leave the other two guys' food alone).

Now, this cat was smarter than any cat I've ever had, and I've had some pretty smart cats (one learned to silence a bell that we'd hung on her to warn birds away, another, like you described, developed a distinct "I want to go outside" meow, but neither did anything that couldn't have been the result of a simple instinctive adaptation). So if we accept this cat's behavior as "thinking," I'd say that some cats are capable of it, but probably not all. Maybe they're the borderline case: less evolved than cats, no thinking; more evolved than cats, thinking.

sunbear

09-08-1999, 06:43 AM

A dog is probably on the level of a 1 or 2 year old human, but has more memories. It does not have a sense of time. Everyone knows it takes only a few hours for a dog to forget it had behaved badly. And time stops for a dog while you are at work.

NanoByte

09-09-1999, 05:30 PM

Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Arf! Arf!

WANTED!

As a typical American victim of gunplay, my master was found shot today by some guy who said he was gonna take his ball and go home. I think his name was 'Mike'. He said he wanted more facts. Well, Sgt. Friday is now after those things, such as where he hangs out, Ma'am. He is believed to look like this:

http://www.nkfm.org/safari/1997sum/clown.jpg

But the American saga continues: I just got his PIN number off the I'net, and with the help of a dog stool, I'm gonna get out as much of the $1,000,000 in his bank account as I can count up to. Those dang chimps who snag all the write-ups on intelligence -- well, if they can't count past nine, I'll show them!

And, BTW, here's what Time says on the subject of what animals are thinking about these days:

http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,30198,00.html

Back to how a certain human thinks:

If it makes you feel the argument is being posed on a more intellectual plain, you can substitute the following question: "If I were invisible, how would it change my life?"

Guess I just don't unnerstan' those folks out on the "plain[s]". 'Out of sight, out of mind,' I guess. Woof! Woof!

I would say that the fact that humans are the only animals that consider the possibility of other intelligent species is one more proof that humans are the only intelligent species.

I talked to his pet just the other day. She said she had considered that many of his fellow beings seemed to be intelligent, but that she was having a real problem applying that description to him. She also said that he had never asked her if she had done this, so she didn't know how he had concluded that she hadn't done this. She said she had published her ruminations on her Web page, but she says she knows Mike is not too computer literate. . .that he is still working on the non-computer version.

. . .the answer to all of life's mysteries is 42.

I thought it was 51.

Well, I still have to go with bantmof: Intelligence is a matter of degree (but not a college one).

But all these stories about intelligent cats. . . Gimme a break! Rrrrrrrruff!

Ray's dog